So you knew about the pay gap, but did you know about the Wikipedia gender gap?
In probably not surprising news given women remain under represented in politics and senior corporate business, the BBC discovered that only 17 per cent of notable Wikipedia pages are about women, and just 15 per cent of the website’s volunteer editors are female.
Which wasn’t going to do at all. So the BBC (yet another reason to love their work) ran a 12-hour edit-a-thon which encouraged users to add articles about inspirational women to help to close the gender gap online.
Launching in 13 countries, the #100womenwiki event saw editors and contributors around the world — including actress and Prince Harry’s girlfriend Meghan Markle — add unrepresented women to the site and editing articles to improve the coverage of women.
Some of the profiles created during the project include Fatuma Ali Saman, a teacher and important figure in the fight for the rights of women and their representation in Kenya; Laura Coryton, the woman who campaigned to get the tax on tampons overturned in the UK; and Ieshia Evan, the civil rights activist in the legendary protest photo in Louisiana.
Markle nominated Suhani Jalota, who has received recognition for improving the lives of young Indian women by reforming public health in slums.
“Her example is one of global positive change,” Markle said. Jalota’s start-up, the Myna Foundation, produces sanitary products to improve women’s health and trains women to be entrepreneurs who can run franchise businesses.
According to Wikimedia UK, the edit-a-thon broke records for “the highest number of entries about women added to Wikipedia in a single event”.
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